Philosophy, Science and Religion mark three of the most fundamental modes of thinking about the world and our place in it. Are these modes incompatible? Put another way: is the intellectually responsible thing to do to ‘pick sides’ and identify with one of these approaches at the exclusion of others? Or, are they complementary or mutually supportive? As is typical of questions of such magnitude, the devil is in the details. For example, it is important to work out what is really distinctive about each of these ways of inquiring about the world. In order to gain some clarity here, we’ll be investigating what some of the current leading thinkers in philosophy, science and religion are actually doing.
This course, entitled ‘Religion and Science’, is the third of three related courses in our Philosophy, Science and Religion Online series. The course will address five themes, each presented by an expert in the area.
1. Science, Religion, and the Origin of the Universe (Professor Tim Maudlin, NYU )
2. Buddhism and Science (Professor Graham Priest, CUNY)
3. Evolution and Design (Dr Kevin Scharp, St Andrews)
4. Sin Suffering and Salvation: Evolutions Thorny Issues (Dr Bethany Sollereder, Oxford)
5. Human Uniqueness in Science, Theology, and Ethics (Professor David Clough, Chester)
The first and second courses in the Philosophy, Science and Religion series, 'Science and Philosophy' and 'Philosophy and Religion' were launched in 2017 and you can sign up to these at any time. It is not necessary to have completed these courses to follow this course. However, completing all three courses will give you a broader understanding of this fascinating topic. Look for:
• Philosophy, Science and Religion I: Science and Philosophy - https://www.coursera.org/learn/philosophy-science-religion-1
• Philosophy, Science and Religion II: Philosophy and Religion - https://www.coursera.org/learn/philosophy-science-religion-2
Upon successful completion of all three courses, students will:
(1) Understand the main parameters at stake in the current debate between science and religion.
(2) Have some familiarity with the relevant areas of science that feature in the debate—including cosmology, evolution, and the neurosciences—and will have begun to engage with them conceptually.
(3) Have encountered key philosophical approaches to the interface between science and religion, and will have had the opportunity to engage them in practice.
(4) Have embarked constructively in cross-disciplinary conversations.
(5) Have demonstrated an openness to personal growth through a commitment to dialogue across intellectual and spiritual boundaries.
You can also follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/EdiPhilOnline and you can follow the hashtag #psrmooc

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Science, Religion and the Origins of the Universe

In this module Tim Maudlin, Professor of the Foundations of Physics at New York University (NYU) discusses stories and theories of the origins of the cosmos from the perspectives of various religions, philosophy, and Science. He then explains what our physics tells us and compares this to the origins stories.

講師

Dr Mog Stapleton

Dr J Adam Carter

Researcher

Dr Orestis Palermos

Research Explorer

Dr Mark Harris

Senior Lecturer in Science and Religion

Professor Duncan Pritchard

Professor of Philosophy

字幕

I'm Tim Maudlin professor of philosophy at New York University. I specialize in philosophy of science and particularly in the foundations of physics. So, where did everything come from? Where did all of this come from? That's a question that everyone has asked, that humans have asked throughout the ages and have tried to answer in various ways. We find ourselves in the world. We look around, there's all kinds of structure, there's a structure on the earth and the larger structure in the skies, and we have to ask, where did it all come from? How did things come to be the way they are? Humans have always asked questions like that, and tried to answer them in various ways. The story of the entire physical universe is cosmology, because the entire physical universe is the cosmos. And through religion, through philosophy, and through science, we've tried to come to grips with these sorts of questions. We're gonna be talking today about what some of those answers are, and how they've changed through the course of human history. The first attempts to account for the entire universe were given in mythology and in religion, and they have different structures. One example is given by the Chinese sage Lao Tzu writing in the Dao De Jing. About this, he wrote, "There was something featureless, yet complete. Born before Heaven and Earth. Silent, amorphous, it stood alone and unchanging. We may regard it as the Mother of Heaven and Earth. Not knowing its name, I style it, The Way." So, according to Lao Tzu, things started from this entirely unstructured state. A state that didn't have the beautiful galaxies, the stars that we see today. Something had to happen to try and change it from this amorphous state into the structured state and he has something to say about that as well, "The way gave birth to unity. Unity gave birth to duality. Duality gave birth to Trinity. Trinity gave birth to the myriad creatures. The myriad creatures bear Yin on their back and embrace Yang in their bosoms. They neutralize these vapors and thereby achieve harmony." So, somehow, from this one undifferentiated mass, there came to be two, than three, than many. We can call this idea Birth from Chaos, that the universe started out in some kind of unstructured state and then transitioned into the structure we see now. How exactly that transition occurred is going to look a little different depending upon who's telling the story. A different kind of account can be found in the Hindu tradition. There, instead of starting out with chaos, with undifferentiated stuff and transitioning into structure, you have cycles. The universe began. The universe we're aware of began in a certain way and goes through a kind of birth and death. The cycles in the Hindu cosmology who asked for four million, three hundred and twenty thousand years, and are divided further into four epochs and those epochs are divided even further. But the they start out, grow, and then decay, and then end. And the ending of one of these periods becomes the beginning of the next. So, you go through cycle after cycle after cycle of birth, growth, death, rebirth. We can call that a Cyclic Cosmology, and that could go on back in time forever. The third kind of idea is illustrated in the biblical story of creation. In that story, instead of starting with some undifferentiated mass, you start with nothing at all. And God creates ex nihilo from nothing, the entire material world already structured, already in a form very similar to what we see today. That happened at a certain period of time in the material world only has a finite lifetime. If you go through the story of the Bible and try and calculate backwards, when the universe began, you can arrive at a number. Bishop Usher came to the number 4004 BC, and you say it was then that everything started, and we can call that the theory of the Finite Past. So, we have three possibilities so far. Birth from Chaos, Cyclic Cosmology and a Finite Past.